house in Melbourne was not connected to a sewerage pipe until 1897 when
the system serving inner Sydney was completed; it would be 'some years
into the next century', as David Dunstan has explained, 'before the inner
area of the metropolis could be said to be comprehensively sewered.'70
Hobart, Brisbane and Perth were late to be sewered. Hobart agreed to a
scheme in 1903 but by 1914 only the bulk of the houses in the city council
area had been sewered, Perth commenced public works in 1906, operable in
1912, though 'even at this date ... unregenerate households [used] nothing
67John R. Laverty, 'The History of Municipal Government in Brisbane 1859-1925: A Study of the Development of Metropolitan Government in a Context of Urban Expansion', PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1968, pp.211-15,414
68Su-Jane Hunt and Geoffrey Bolton, 'Cleansing the Dunghill: Water Supply and Sanitation in Perth 1878-1912', Studies in Western Australian History, no 2, Mar 1978, pp.1-17
69Ibid., p.12
91
better than the old cesspits',71 and the first section of sewerage pipe was not connected in Brisbane until 1923. In 1901 the proportion of unsewered households in the Sydney statistical district was 34 per cent; the same percentage was recorded in 1956, while from 1916 to 1935 the proportion was between 22 and 26 per cent, the same as in the 1960s.72 Suburbs in the main cities retained their dependence on the nightman and the dunny until well into the second half of the twentieth century, for as long as population growth outstripped the spread of sewerage systems.73 So, too, did country towns, unsewered and of varying dirtiness.74
It is apparent, then, that sanitary conditions, though improving, were grim. H ousehold slops discharged directly into street gutters and storm water drains in unsewered districts and the pressure of numbers combined with local politics and ratepayer democracy to ensure that excreta disposal remained a difficulty. Open sewers, once stormwater drains or natural watercourses, were still an acute problem in Brisbane in 1925 though the opening of the sewerage scheme promised hope.75 Nightsoil disposal remained the worst obstacle to public cleanliness. Dunstan records that on wet cold nights in late nineteenth century Melbourne an army of nightmen were accustomed to dum p their load in a creek rather than the distant market garden or local authority farm; they also fouled roads en route. Indeed, municipalities complained that carts from adjacent districts or from the city smeared the territory of neighbours. This nightsoil dumping, fuelled by bickering between local councils, that was not resolved until the
71 Hunt and Bolton, 'Cleansing the Dunghill', p.15 72Coward, Out of Sight, Table 11.2, p.226
73Commonwealth Year Book, 1901-14, pp.873-89; Barrett, The Inner Suburbs, p.136; Dunstan,
Governing the Metropolis, p.288; Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia, vol 4, 1901-1942, p.39
74For descriptions of country towns see R.J. Millard, 'Typhoid Fever in New South Wales, 1898-1904', TAMC, 1905, pp.404-16; Cumpston and McCallum, Intestinal Infections, where Millard is quoted on pp.124-5
1890s in M elbourne could have been an issue elsew here; certainly it was in B risbane.76
The w ater su p p ly also rem ained dubious at the tu rn of the century, in the m e tro p o litan centres as in to w n s, especially in su m m er shortages. A u stralia's w o rst d ro u g h t from 1895 to 1903, the years of h eat and w ater sh o rtag e, com bined w ith p o p u latio n increase an d costs to delay sew erage schem es o utside Sydney and M elbourne because sew erage n eed ed w ater. A ccording to Laverty, Brisbane's w ater su p p ly was not adequate till 1919.77 W ithout w ater, connected pipes w ere useless. C onversely, we can generalise fro m D u n s ta n 's M e lb o u rn e fin d in g s a n d C o w a rd ’s in S y d n ey th a t im p ro v em en ts in the w ater su p p ly p ro d u ced negative as well as positive results w hen unaccom panied by sew erage. D unstan has described vividly h o w reform ers co m p lain ed th ro u g h o u t the second half of the nineteenth century about how the fire plugs (hydrants) attached to m etropolitan w ater m ains, u sed to extinguish fires an d hose dow n streets fouled by m anure, allow ed filth to contam inate w ater at low pressure. W ater, too, seeped into e a rth closets or w as d elib erately w ash ed into cesspits a n d o u t into the streets.78
A dult m ortality rates fell in the w ake of sanitary reform ; b u t continued hig h in fan t m o rtality rates, reinforced by reference to the British figures, stren g th en ed assum ptions th at infant m ortality w as d e p en d en t on im proper fee d in g .79 E nvironm ental filth was d o w n g rad ed as a cause to the point that it w as excluded from the rep o rt of the Royal C om m ission on the Birth Rate.
76Dunstan, Governing the Metropolis, pp.145-6, 247, 266-8; also Dunstan, 'Dirt and Disease', pp.156-9; Laverty, 'History of Muniripal Government in Brisbane', p.211
77Laverty, ibid., p.408
78Dunstan, Governing the Metropolis, pp.138, 273-5, 281, also 'Dirt and Disease', p.169. Coward, Out of Sight, gives examples of faulty plumbing, e.g. p.94
79This contemporary view is mirrored in Lewis's argument that the impact of sanitary measures on infant diarrhoea was mediated by improvements in nutrition and domestic hygiene, whereas sanitation had a more direct effect on diarrhoeal mortality rates in adults. Lewis, 'Sanitation, Intestinal Infections, and Infant Mortality ...', p.337
93
The C om m ission, w hich as I su g g est in C hapter 2 o v erlap p ed the change from the 'old' to the ’n e w ’ public health, discussed the m ilk supply, b u t not sa n itatio n .
C ertain ly the m ilk su p p ly w as d an g ero u s. The p ro b lem s of filthy d airies an d fau lty d istrib u tio n nonetheless d id a p p e a r soluble by public in te rv en tio n co m p ared w ith teaching m o th ers a b o u t food an d dom estic hygiene, w hich re q u ire d h av in g to g rap p le w ith th eir 'incalculable and u n m an ag eab le ... ignorance an d carelessness', as san itatio n ists such as Dr James Jam ieson, health officer to the City of M elbourne, arg u ed .80
Follow ing tren d s in G reat Britain and the U n ited States, N ew South W ales passed a Dairies Supervision Act in 1886. The Act w as introduced by the infant w elfare au th o rity Dr C harles M ackellar, and req u ired m unicipal councils, initially in Sydney, to keep a register of dairym en and m ilk shops in their districts and to strike off those w ith insanitary prem ises or diseased co w s.81 The occasion h ad been an outbreak of ty p h o id fever in Leichhardt traced to a dairy th at sold m ilk infected by sew age-contam inated w ater from a w ell.82 Victoria had no com parable act until 1905, operational from July 1906 in the m etro p o lis and the provincial cities of Ballarat, B endigo and G eelong.83
R eform ers also battled to reform m ilk distribution. They alleged that m ilk p o iso n in g in babies d e riv e d from its a d u lte ra tio n w ith w ater or
80James Jamieson, 'Twenty Years of Sanitary Progress in Melbourne', TAMC, 1905, p.427 81Dairies Supervision Act 1886, 50 Vic No 17; Kendall, 'Sanitary Supervision of Dairies', AMG, Oct 1885, pp.10-13. The essential secondary source on the state of the Sydney milk supply is Milton Lewis, 'Milk, Mothers, and Infant Welfare', in Jill Roe (ed), Twentieth Century Sydney: Studies in Urban & Social History, Sydney, 1980. On the Dairies Supervision Act, see p.197
82'Polluted Milk and Enteric Fever', from the report by Dr Ashburton Thompson, chief medical inspector to the NSW Board of Health, AMG, Jun 1886, p.233, Jul 1886, pp.265-6; Lewis, 'Milk, Mothers, and Infant Welfare'
83Milk and Dairy Supervision Act 1905, 5 Edw VII No 2011. Victoria did introduce some reforms in the Health Act of 1890 but Dr W.A.N. Robertson, the Chief Veterinary Officer, considered the system before 1906 'a complete failure'. Robertson, 'The Source of Our Milk Supply', The Milk Question, Melbourne, 1921, p.6